While eating the beef brisket at The Jade Seafood Restaurant last month, I couldn’t help but think about the tasty Beef Brisket appetizer dish that I had at Good Choice Restaurant during my visit to Vancouver earlier this year. Hence, I decided to find time in my eating schedule to revisit Good Choice again for the Beef Brisket dish.

To start, we ordered the Beef Brisket with Sweet Soy Sauce. I specifically requested for a small order since it is available in two sizes according to the Chinese menu – $10.80 for the small and $20.80 for the full order though the menu with the English translation doesn’t list any options for size and lists this dish at $20.80. I had known that the small size was available from my previous visit. The Beef Brisket with Sweet Soy Sauce was as good as before. The slices of brisket were very flavourful and tender. It just melted in our mouths. I still think this is the best beef brisket I’ve ever had prepared Chinese-style.

Next we ordered the Pipa Tofu with Abalone Sauce ($14.80). As I had mentioned in the post on my previous visit, this dish is listed on the Chinese only Signature Dish menu and not on the regular menu with English translations. This dish was as good as before. The oval-shaped tofu balls were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, although I did notice that the tofu was slightly softer on this visit than on my previous visit. I really liked the delicate, savoury Abalone Sauce as it did not overpower the delicate flavours of the tofu balls.

My foodie friend Grayelf wanted to order the Steamed Minced Pork with Salted Fish ($15.80) again. Like on our previous visit, we had to customize this dish as it is not available on the regular menu. A variation of this dish, the Steamed Minced Pork with Salty Egg, is available on the menu so we asked them to substitute the salty egg with the salted fish. The flavours in this dish were as good as before although I thought the minced pork was cooked a touch longer this time than on my previous visit so it was not as tender. Overall, this dish was still pretty tasty.

For a vegetable dish, we decided to try the Pan Fried Green Beans with Minced Pork and Preserved Olives ($12.80). This was actually one of my favourite dishes of the evening. The green beans were perfectly al dente. At first, we weren’t too sure what the preserved olives would be like. As it turns outs, the preserved olives were diced up and mixed in the minced pork to give the dish a nice “umami” flavour. And if you’re not an olive fan, you need not fear as there isn’t that much olives in the dish and you can’t really taste the olives unless you actually bite into one of the few diced olive chunks.

When the bill arrived, we were in for a bit of a surprise as we were charged $20.80 f0r the beef brisket dish. When I brought this up to the staff’s attention, she insisted that there was no mistake and that we were served the full size order. I explained that I had specifically requested for a small order and she told me there must have been some mix up in how our server put in the order. Since it amounted to a couple bucks extra per person, I decided not to pursue the matter further. Looking back at the pictures from my previous visit, I’m not entirely convinced that the portion we were served this time was actually twice as much as what we had during our visit in June. It was certainly great value at $10.80 and a definite winner, but as tasty as this beef brisket was, I’m not sure I feel the same way about the dish at $20.80 for what we actually got. This is certainly something to be cognisant of if you want to try this dish at Good Choice as the way it is listed in the menus can lead to a lot of confusion since the Chinese menu offers a choice of two sizes while the English translated menu only offers the full size version.